Movement is Essential to Life

In this article, I’m going to take your understanding of the human backbone to a whole new level your doctor knows nothing about; promise! You’re going to learn how your spine is really an organ with a very important function essential to life; movement. You heard of the expression that your eyes are the window to your soul.

Well…Your posture is a window into whether or not a disease will begin to manifest or not! I’m going to explain what the latest science from Nobel Prize Winning scientists is saying about your posture. Imagine a time when dentistry began discovering the relationship between gum disease and cancer, heart disease an epidemic of that time that took countless lives. A true epidemic that dentistry filled the solution for in the 18th century. This is where chiropractic is today with posture. Look…. May I gently tell you, we had two types of doctors in the 18th century. We had a general doctor and a dentist. The general doctor at that time had whiskey and pliers to treat your mouth problem. Then, we had the new emerging dental field. This is where we are today in chiropractic; and I know your brain health, tissue, and organ function are more important than your mouth!

Remember, your tiny spinal movement counts most! And when you have a chiropractic problem, you need a specialist; a chiropractor to fix that problem. Or…well, grab the whiskey and pliers; drugs and surgery. Get it? I discuss: The importance of spinal motion has been long misunderstood amongst academics your spine is an organ.

8 Key Concepts: Movement is essential to life: Human Research & Chiropractic Care: The Winsor Autopsy Study: Exact science of the chiropractic adjustment: Four Main Points for the Health-Promotion Solution: Chiropractic lowered blood pressure: Posture Matters- The window into health: Medicalization of Life Concept.

Movement Is Essential To Life

Modern science teaches that if the planet were to cease motion, life as we know it would cease to exist. In fact, cellular biologists know that biomolecules within the cell require movement. Without movement, we could not sustain life. Blood cells even require it; without movement, they cannot transport oxygen. If our lungs do not move, we cannot breathe air. If our heart is not moving, we cannot pump blood. If our spines do not move, we cannot create the motion required for proper joint nutrition, and for the activities of daily living, or the stimulation of the joint-brain pathways required for proper brain and body function. As I already proved, without your spinal motion, our brain and body cannot function properly.

You have heard me say this before. The power generator does not have energy, the power plant generates energy. In the human body, spinal motion is the power generator. The importance of spinal motion has been long misunderstood amongst academics. The fact is, the proper spinal motion is required for proper brain function and the coordination of activities such as concentration and learning, emotions, motor control, and organ function (including immune organs).

Dr. Roger Sperry, Nobel Prize recipient for his work in neurological research, states, “90% of the stimulation and nutrition to the brain is generated by the movement of the spine.” He said that the importance of movement of the spine concerning brain function “could be equated to that of a windmill that generates electricity for a power plant.” He also stated that the “more structurally distorted we are, the less energy we have for metabolism, for healing, and for thinking.” The brain requires constant input from movement to control and regulate our bodies.

In fact, research has shown that if you cut off the supply of somatosensory information going to the brain, the brain will reach a state of a coma! Did you know that over half of all the nerve impulses being sent to your brain and body in your spinal cord are for the delivery of movement stimulation to the brain?

That is what science shows, over half! Movement charges your brain’s battery, making you able to think, feel, and function better. According to Dr. Restak’s book, The Brain: The Last Frontier, and other prominent neurologists, physiologists, psychologists, and educators, “messages to your brain created by proper movement (especially of your spine) have been called an essential nutrient for brain function and development.”

In fact, research is now showing that people who do not properly stimulate their brain with joint movement have learning, memory, emotional, behavioral, and overall health deficits. So let’s look at human research and chiropractic care. Chiropractic advocates like Dr. Dan Sullivan travel around the globe, teaching about this new perspective on chiropractic. He teaches us that the human spine is more than a hard shell that surrounds and protects the spinal cord. 

Sure, that is a really big deal, and reason enough to have chiropractic care. Think of the spine as an organ; it is a neuro-spinal organ. In other words, just like your lungs and heart, those organs serve a purpose.

The spine, outside its protective layer, has a job as an organ; a job like any other organ. It sends feedback constantly, every second of your life. It sends feedback up to your brain, so your brain can receive feedback so as to adapt and understand where it is in space, along with what the biomolecular needs of the body happen to be.

Brain researcher and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Roger Sperry said that 90% of nutrition to the brain is based on the movement of the spine. Let me repeat: 90% of the nutrients your brain requires for the health of your body is a requirement based on the feedback it receives from the mobility of the spine. That is certainly a game-changer.

When a baby is born, and there is a lack of movement in the baby’s spine, particularly in the upper cervical spine, it wreaks havoc on his or her whole neurophysiological system. Thus, your spine is an organ. These things called receptors surround your spine; they are little neurons that communicate with your brain. Your brain receives information from these little neurons.

Mechanoreceptors or movement sensors serve as a good example; they are neurons that receive feedback based on movement. Mechanoreceptors are heavily populated around your spine. They are actually in your entire body, but they are most densely populated in your spine. A neurology textbook, The Principles of Neuroscience, says that “the CNS depends upon excitatory input from mechanoreceptors to stimulate the brain and spinal cord.”

It was found that approximately 80% of the baseline activity of the central nervous system comes from the input of these mechanoreceptors. Most of these mechanoreceptors are located in the spine and are near ligaments and joints. They are in muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs (a proprioceptive sensory receptor organ that senses changes in muscle tension), and other tiny muscles around the spine. Loss of mechanoreceptor activity, secondary to subluxation of the spine, has a huge effect on the divergent nature of the central nervous system.

So in terms of pediatrics, That means that if a baby’s spine is not moving correctly, all higher organs are being affected because the brain cannot fully adapt to its environment. It is not getting the proper feedback from the spinal mechanoreceptors. Therefore, the movement of the spine is critical to the health and development of the brain, which then determines how the stomach acid, increased heart rate, and all the biochemistry for the body are made. That information is all based on the feedback coming to the brain, and your spine is an organ that tells the brain how to respond. Subluxation of the spine alters this connection, and it changes the way the brain understands the body, and when that happens, the physiology to health is on a downward spiral.

Another study published in neuroscience found nearly 300 mechanoreceptors near the atlas vertebrae (or top part of the neck) per gram of tissue. This activity is always sending messages to the brain, every second of your life. If you have a vertebral subluxation complex at the atlas vertebrae, the motion is stopped (300 mechanoreceptors per gram of tissue are shut down) and you have inappropriate feedback to the brain. That feedback is supposed to be appropriate to allow the brain to control the rest of the body when it is inappropriate at that magnitude. Can you see why it would have a detrimental effect? The chiropractic adjustment to the spine improves feedback to the brain, which provides essential feedback to every single organ to the body.

In 2011, a study out of Japan showed an adjustment decreased all the stress hormones in the body. It took the body from sympathetic overdrive fight or flight dominant state and reduced it back to a normal function. The need for chiropractic care is not about philosophy; this is a science, and we now know exactly why this is happening. It is going on because of all that mechanoreceptor activity the brain receives following a chiropractic adjustment, due to sticky spinal joints not getting enough spinal motion.

Such is due to our current incongruent genetic lifestyle of sedentary living and denying the needs of our inner Aborigine. In 2009 out of John Hopkins University, scientists did a study that showed an increase in stress hormones and particularly adrenaline, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. The studies showed that when you increase those hormones and increase in noradrenaline, there was a direct cause in a list of diseases: excessive weight gain, glaucoma, bipolar, type I and II, diabetes, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, immune system problems, asthma, and even cancer. In other words, having a properly aligned spine free from subluxation will provide maximum mechanoreceptor afferent input to charge the brain will have an impact on all these diseases.

Once again, Dynamic people understand that the spine is more than a protective hard bone encasing- it is a neuro-spinal organ. Your brain gets the information from these mechanoreceptors that are loaded in your spinal joints, and any little misalignment in your spine that would cause your spine not to move appropriately would cause edema, spasm, and lack of motion.

These symptoms indicate to chiropractors that there is a vertebral subluxation, which significantly interferes with your central nervous system. When the neuro-spinal organ is not sending feedback to the brain and not appropriately communicating with the body, your hormones are going to be stressed. If the body starts breaking down because of a lack of neural input to the brain, it may affect the thyroid or any organ supplied by that nerve. Therefore, the problem is indirectly at the least and directly at best, related to spinal subluxation.

In 1922, Harvard medical researcher Dr. Henry Winsor, M.D. opened numerous human cadavers and traced the neurology of the diseased organs from which each subject died to its specific spinal vertebrae and the nerve root exiting from each vertebra. He published his findings in JAMA in 1922. You can still find it in JAMA today!

A rumor circulating chiropractic campus across the world says that this doctor was trying to disprove chiropractic. But the study accidentally provided one of the chiropractic’s primary evidence ever published validating early 1920 chiropractic theory.

This is what he found: • Heart disease: all 20 cases of heart and pericardium conditions had the upper five thoracic vertebrae subluxation. • Lung disease: all 26 cases had a subluxation in the upper thoracic T1-T4. • Stomach disease: All 13 cases had a subluxation in mid-thoracic T5-T9. • Liver disease: all 13 cases had a subluxation in T5-T9. • Gallstones: All five cases had a subluxation in T5-T9. • Pancreas: All three cases had a subluxation in T5-T9. • Spleen: All 11 cases had a subluxation in T5-T9. Kidney: All 17 had a subluxation in T10-T12. • Prostate & bladder disease: All eight cases had a subluxation in L1-L3. • Uterus: All two cases had a subluxation in L2.

Today, nearly 100 years later, science is getting us closer to the understanding of chiropractic theory. In other words, when mechanoreceptors surrounding the spinal joints are altered, due to vertebral subluxation or sedentary spinal joints they affect a specific neuro-spinal mechanism that is fascinating to neuroscience. Specifically, let me get all geeky and Star Trek nerdy for a moment, we know now that it alters the input into layer seven in the lamina of the spinal cord. These mechanoreceptors travel into layer seven of the spinal cord and synapse or connect. When they exit out, they go directly to the sympathetic chain ganglion and affect all the main blood vessels, all the viscera (AKA the second brain) except the adrenal medulla. They also influence the immune system, the intrafusal fibers of the intervertebral disc, and all the muscle spindles of the human body.

A 2007 New Zealand study in the Journal of Neurophysiology offers some interesting insight into what a chiropractic adjustment can do. In the study, researchers discovered that just one adjustment was radically altering the brain in a positive manner. Chiropractic researcher Dr. Dan Sullivan often discusses his insight into this research, when explaining chiropractic to medical doctors and other specialized doctors all over the world.

He shares an insight he discovered while interviewing some of the researchers from the study. He states, “Other researchers came in and watched and were blown away; a behavior expert noticed they could not get the brain to respond like that with six weeks of their care against what one chiropractic adjustment did to the brain. They had a great control group. The chiropractic adjustment affected the neurology to the brain unlike anything else that has ever been seen, because of the mechanoreceptor stimulation”. In other words, the researchers “found that one adjustment has an effect on growth and repair of muscle, and in strength to a motor unit that you would get in three to four weeks of weight training.”

Here are four main points for the health-promotion solution. 1. Health is dictated by our ability to adapt. Your central nervous system runs the body and causes you to adapt. 2. The central nervous system is dependent on the neuro-spinal organ (your spine). A healthy spine is dependent upon getting checked and evaluated; not based on symptoms. Important note: the New Zealand studies were done using people without any symptoms, so they did not have any pain! They did not have neck pain; they found subluxation of the spine without pain; they evaluated for subluxation and adjusted them, got the brain changes, and published their findings in a major medical journal. 3. Your spine needs to be checked and assessed throughout your life so it can remain healthy, to have your brain and nervous system be healthy regardless of your symptoms. Just like you have to cut your grass every week and continue to eat food which is the fuel your body requires. Proper spinal motion needs to be maintained throughout your lifetime. We are all impacted by sedentary living conditions and having your spine periodically adjusted by a chiropractor will help improve brain function and overall nervous system function, so you function well. 4. Doctors of Chiropractic have a unique perspective on health different from medical doctors.

We are looking at health promotion and proper human function; not sickness-crisis-based or pathology. It is like comparing apples to oranges. Neither is better or worse than the other; they are just different. In this training of The Five Pillars of a Dynamic Health, I am introducing a new concept of health which I call healthology, the study of health based on a differing perspective, the health promotion/restoration ethic, and why lifestyle chiropractic care is the glue that holds the structure and function of the body together.

An interesting 2007 study on blood pressure in the Journal of Human Hypertension demonstrated that chiropractic adjustments lowered blood pressure. We are beginning to understand that the same mechanism of nervous system interference with the neuro-spinal organ and mechanoreceptors into the innervation of the central nervous system may be the neural mechanism responsible for the improvement of blood pressure. They found that the adjustment lowered blood pressure more than what two blood pressure medications could do in combination, just by adjusting the upper cervical spine. And guess what, your posture is a window to your health.

Posture Matters

Research has found that even the smallest forward head posture wreaks havoc on health. From almost 800 humans, they learned that minor forward head posture is affecting everything from breathing, to heart rate, to digestion, to disability and pain status.

It is so interesting that society and our culture are so hypnotized toward the medicalization of life and the diagnosis of a disease, that they miss the big picture. Health is a continuum, not an endpoint. So when someone says, “I am glad I have not needed you yet?” I usually respond with, “Oh, you have perfect posture, mimicked the lifestyle of our ancestors to which evolved our genome and had been walking 8 to 10 miles every day? Oh, I am glad you have no need to brush your teeth or take a soap shower.” Imagine if you decided not to shower for a week? How about a month? How about a few years? You have gotten this far in the training, and if you still do not understand or accept that you and your family need lifestyle chiropractic care for the household…Well, George Washington had wooden pegs in his teeth. Get the drift?

As I already proved, this concept for the need for lifestyle chiropractic care is not based on a theoretical construct or some New Age philosophy. It rests on evidence-based-sciences that I have connected the dots with research having both nothing to do with chiropractic and at the same time everything to do with chiropractic. It is not about philosophy or life force.

It is about scientific evidence not by breaking open the bones of rats and animal research, but based on clinical experience and what works on a case by case basis, based upon humanity! And that’s evidence-informed healthcare, that’s the health promotion solution!